


I'll Be What I Am

by Zee (orphan_account)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-31
Updated: 2005-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:24:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This entire planet feels like an ex-girlfriend's apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be What I Am

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the team's two-week stay on Earth at the beginning of season two.

It’s not the hardest thing he's ever done.

The first time men under his command died, John had made the decision to visit their families personally. Afterwards, he'd thrown up over and over until all he could do was dry heave.

He's made a tradition of it since, paying respect to his men by making sure that their loved ones at least get a face to blame, someone who was there and can honestly say that their sons or daughters died honorably, bravely. Sometimes the visits seem to get easier with time, and sometimes he ends up staring into the nearest porcelain bowl he can find.

It's different with Ford's family, he reminds himself over and over, different because Ford *isn't* dead. He's MIA, but John can and will find him, no matter what the size of a galaxy is. This is his mantra as he rings the doorbell at Ford's grandma's house, as he sees the apprehension and despair in Ford’s cousin's eyes as soon as John tells her his name and title. 

It isn’t the hardest thing he'd ever done, but it’s up there. The cousin doesn’t cry; she turns away and blinks a lot, her eyes bright. John feels like the worst, most worthless and helpless human being ever to walk the earth.

He goes to the local bar afterwards, an unremarkable place that he's already forgotten the name of. The bartender is a woman who's probably only thirty or so, but looks much older, and she smiles suggestively every time John catches her eye. She's not bad-looking in the least and she seems nice, but John has tried that route to get over this before, and it always backfires. 

He saw the way Elizabeth, Rodney and Carson lit up at the prospect of going back, of going *home,* even for just a couple of weeks. John had been neutral on the prospect: leaving Atlantis felt like leaving behind a limb, an extra sense, and he knew just what was waiting for him on Earth. It wasn’t any different from what had been there when he left.

Except that it was different – it was worse. There were people staring at him all the god damn time, and they gave him awards that he didn’t deserve and made him go to fucking ceremonies and General O’Neill looked so damn proud and John felt nauseous. Three days into their ‘vacation,’ he looked up Roger Anderson, an army buddy whom he’d known for years and one of the few people he had considered a good friend. But Roger had been called away to Iraq, and John forced himself not to think about the possibility of Roger not coming back.

It’s not like John would be able to go to the funeral, anyway. 

Today is his fourth day on Earth and he’s piss-drunk in a nameless bar in Colorado, and he’s probably going to end up throwing up, more thanks to the beer than to the grief. What grief? He’s not sad about Ford, because he’s going to get Ford *back.* He has a chance this time, a chance to turn things right and not lose another one of his men. 

The next morning he’s ready to call up the SGC and beg them to send him back early somehow. This entire planet feels like an ex-girlfriend’s apartment, claustrophobic and shoving painful stale memories in his face every chance it gets. He just wants to get the clothes he left here by accident and go, and possibly he took that metaphor too far, but it’s still creepily accurate.

He goes back to the army base and hangs around, trying not to get into people’s way. He runs into Rodney in the mess hall that evening, looking harried and annoyed and just as sleep-deprived as he was when they got here.

John sits down across from him, though he’s not hungry. “You know, this is supposed to be a *vacation.*”

Rodney just snorts. “Yes, well, perhaps that’s what they told *you.* Not all of us get to be slacker flyboys all the time.”

John smiles, because if Rodney’s insulting him the stress can’t be too bad. “You’re not still on the stimulants, are you?”

“They took them away,” Rodney says, in the same tone of voice most people would use to say ‘they’ve been killing small defenseless puppies.’ “And god, the coffee on this base is a crime against man and nature.”

John snorts. “You’re tough. You can hack it.”

Rodney just sniffs, and John guesses that he completely missed the irony in John’s words. “It wouldn’t be so awful if I didn’t have to put up with such idiocy all day. As it is...” He sighs the sigh of the long-suffering and pokes at his salad.

John likes this, just sitting here with Rodney, listening to him gripe and moan and make inappropriate noises as he eats. He doesn’t talk much himself, and after a while his eyes glaze over, and he stares at a spot on the wall next to Rodney’s ear and thinks about surfing. So much water, and that never seemed to *mean* quite as much as it does to him now, like when realizing how vast the sky was meant so much more to him after he first became a pilot.

“Sheppard. *John.* *Lieutenant colonel.*” John starts when Rodney pokes him with a fork.

“Hmm?” 

Rodney’s expression is actually soft, slightly concerned — though mostly annoyed. “You’re such a ditz. You haven’t been listening to anything I just said, have you?” John scowls and opens his mouth to retort, but Rodney barrels on. “Anyway, as I was saying, I’m concerned about you.”

John blinks. “Why?”

“Why?” Rodney rolls his eyes, like John has showcased his immense stupidity by asking that. “We’ve been back for, what, five days now. Unlike myself, you don’t have to be trapped in this underground hellhole. What’ve you been doing? Have you been visiting friends, family? You reek of alcohol, and somehow I don’t think you got drunk amidst a community of friendly, loving people who are thrilled to have you back.”

Rodney’s words are like mostly blunt knives, stabbing at him and missing the mark slightly but still hurting. John just sits there.

Rodney cocks his head, peering at him. “You know, they’re letting me escape from this hole for a few hours tonight. Do you want to go get food that isn’t cafeteria slop somewhere? We could even see a movie — ooh, I haven’t seen the new Star Wars that came out yet. I’m in the mood to be bitterly disappointed, how about you?”

“I can’t.” The words come out automatically, and John is already standing. “Sorry, I — I have. Things.” 

Maybe Rodney calls after him, and maybe he doesn’t, but John is already walking away, heading out of the cafeteria as fast as his legs can take him. 

Driving works; driving is okay. He sticks in a tape of something or other — random melancholy country-folk, some Johnny Cash, some Dylan, some Patti Griffith — and drives. He makes it through the night, the fear of bad dreams overcoming his own exhaustion, and falls asleep in the cramped back seat just outside of Salt Lake City.

He wakes up at six-thirty the next evening and wanders around downtown for a bit, scaring large mormon families with his three-day stubble and two-day clothes. He buys a few shot glasses that have the mormon temple on them because he thinks they’re funny, and when the bars close at two am he gets back in the car and drives some more.

He ends up in Wendover eventually, and gambles away some of the money he’s earned while on Atlantis until it starts getting light outside. This time he actually gets himself a motel room, and even brings someone back there with him, a cute waitress he’d flirted with at the casino. Her name is Linda and she has thick red hair and great dimples, and she’s gone by the time he wakes up. 

The next morning, he decides to try out southern Utah, because he always heard it looked like another planet down there. And it does: it looks almost exactly like MXR-578, so much that John catches himself keeping a lookout for the strange alien bears that caught them by surprise there.

He remembers that one of those bears caught Ford, giving him a nasty bite on the forearm. They’d all been terrified of alien rabies or something at the time, but it turned out that all Ford had needed was stitches and some painkillers. He and John had spent a lot of time teasing Rodney about the high-pitched squeals he’d made when the bear attacked. Of course, then Ford had shoved Rodney away and confronted the bear himself, hence the bite. John never saw either of the two men mention it, either to him or to each other, but he did see Rodney visit Ford a lot during the few days he’d been in the medlab.

John is usually real good at phasing out, not thinking, letting his mind take a break for however long it takes. But not right now.

He likes southern Utah. He likes how dry it is, how it feels like there’s *negative* moisture in the air; he likes the colors, the sand the color of dried blood. Mostly he likes how he can drive for hours and hours without seeing anything or anyone except for the occasional car passing him or a rest stop.

He’d like to live here someday, maybe. Just him and the blood-colored ground. 

The few small towns he comes across have really dumb names and horrible bars and they all creep him out: they feel exactly like slightly populated ghost towns. Moab and St. George are a little better, but they’re filled with so many gorgeous fit tan bikers and rafters and hikers that it gets annoying. John keeps driving.

On the fifth shot of tequila on the ninth day, John has the thought that it would be better if Ford had died. He can deal with his people dying; it breaks his heart every time and it never gets easier and it’s *fucking* unfair and awful and the worst thing in the universe, but he can deal with it. He’s used to it. This, this isn’t death – it’s something else. Something in between. And John can comb the entire Pegasus Galaxy, and he still might not find Ford, no matter how loudly he protests this fact to other people.

They all think he’s an idiot. They’ve given up, paid their respects in their heads, and think John should, too. John agrees with them, but that doesn’t change anything.

After a while, he decides to go north, and ends up in Canada before he realizes that his ‘vacation’ ends the next night. He doesn’t have a cell phone; people (Rodney) are probably going insane trying to figure out where he is. 

He catches a plane ticket back down to Colorado, and only half-listens as Rodney raves at him about how *only he* could say something like ‘I have — things’ and then disappear for ten days straight, only to wander casually back into the base as they were on the verge of organizing a police hunt.

“Utah? Fucking *Utah?!*” Rodney is getting slightly purple; John wonders if he should be concerned. “What the *fuck* is in Utah? You’re not even mormon — oh god.” A horrified expression crosses Rodney’s face. “You’re not mormon, are you?”

John blinks. “Yes, Rodney. Yes. I’m mormon.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “God, shut up. Just – shut up. You’re packed, right? Because if we’re *late* to another *galaxy* because of you- “

“I’m packed,” John says, rolling his eyes.

They still have a night before the Daedalus leaves, and John thinks very seriously about going to the local bar and getting shit-faced again, but he doesn’t want to know what a hangover on a space ship taking off feels like. He ends up just staying in his room, reading some War and Peace and trying not to think. 

Sometime late at night, there’s a knock on his door. John doesn’t say anything, but the person comes in anyway, which is how John knows it’s Rodney.

“Your last night on Earth, and you spend it reading. No, not just reading, reading a book you had *on Atlantis.* Christ, John.”

“It’s late, Rodney,” John says, his voice flat. 

Rodney snorts. “Yes, and you’re still awake, obviously, and also reading a really boring book, so forgive me for not feeling much guilt for disturbing you.”

He sits on the edge of the bed, and John finally puts down the book, surrendering. “Did you want something?”

Rodney frowns. “You know, usually you at least pretend to like me.”

John blinks. “Excuse me?”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “I realize how much like a girl I sound, but — look, when I ask someone to go get a pizza with me, and not only do they *refuse,* they proceed to run away to *Utah* and who knows where else for ten days... it sends a certain message.”

An uncomfortable feeling settles in John’s stomach. “Wait a second. You weren’t asking me- “

“I wasn’t asking you out on a date, no,” Rodney snaps. “Last time I checked, *friends* occasionally do things like eat food or watch movies together.”

“Oh.” John shrugs. “Nothing personal, Rodney.”

“Nothing—“ Rodney gapes at him for a second, then scowls. “That’s not an explanation.”

“It’s not.” John puts the book away and lies down, facing the wall. “Good night, Rodney.”

“John.” John hears Rodney move, get up and crouch down next to the bed; he feels a hand on his shoulder, yanking him and Rodney’s face swims into his vision. “What is going *on?* I don’t expect us to be the very best of friends and trade secrets and have sleepovers, but usually you’re not quite so... this.” 

John shrugs. “I just want to get back to Atlantis. I told you, it’s nothing personal.” 

One of the things that sometimes makes it hard to be around Rodney is the way that everything--*everything*--he feels shows up on his face. “It isn’t,” he repeats, and his face looks more vulnerable than John is comfortable with. John’s afraid that he’s going to do something Rodney-ish and absurdly brave and stupid and tactless, but he just says “Okay” and stands up.

John rolls onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. “We have a big day tomorrow. And it really is late.” 

He can feel Rodney’s eye-roll without seeing him. “Of course. Heaven forbid I disrupt your beauty sleep.” He leaves, closing the door quietly behind him, and John stays awake for hours afterward.


End file.
